Friday, 15 April 2016

The Things That Matter Most

It’s a sobering thought that the reductions in planned spending made
by the coalition and the current government are not as big as the total
sums we have sent to the EU and not received back over the same time period.

If
we leave the EU we will regain control of our own money. We could increase
existing budgets and end the upcoming reductions.

The sums involved are set out
clearly in the 2015 government account of our contributions and the sums we
receive back.

We received £4.5bn back in payments to
farmers, universities and other grant recipients form the EU, leaving £10bn of
contributions that are spentelsewhere on the continent.

If Britain were to exit, the
Leave campaign sees no need for us to pay contributions to the EU to trade with
them.

More than 160 countries worldwide trade quite happily with the EU without
paying anything, most under World Trade Organisation rules.

The UK would get a
better agreement than simple WTO low tariffs, as Germany and others sell us so
much more than we sell them and it has said they do not wish to impose new
barriers in the way of such trade.

I have recently set out what that first anti-austerity
Brexit budget could look like, with the full support of Conservatives for
Britain.

We should make £1.1bn available to avoid the cuts to disability
benefits that parliament disagrees with. We should understand the need for more
nurses and doctors in the NHS.

For £250m a year we could train an additional
10,000 doctors over the next few years, and for £800m an additional 60,000
nurses.

For another £800m we could do away with nurses’ loans and give them
training grants instead.

Training more people at home would allow us to cut
down on expensive agency workers and reduce the need to denude foreign
countries of their health professionals to staff ourNHS.

I would like to offer £200m to do
away with parking charges in hospital car parks for relatives and visitors.

There could be £400m for additional expensive drugs and treatments we cannot
currently add to the NHS list, including radon treatment.

We should offer £750m
for social care, so that more people can be assisted in their own homes and
fewer hospital beds need be used for the infirm elderly not in need of
immediate hospital treatment.

There should be £150m more to help people with
social housing caught by the spare room subsidy or bedroom tax, so they can
continue in their present homes.

I would suggest a road
improvement fund to make local road junctions safer and to improve traffic
flows at peaks when people are trying to get to work and get their children to
school.

There’s £500m a year for that.

I would also like to see some tax
reductions so people on lower incomes can get some immediate benefit from the
extra cash.

Why not start by abolishing VAT on domestic energy? All sensible
people want to get rid of fuel poverty, and recognise that home power is dear
in the UK.

We could have an immediate cut by getting rid of the VAT.

Let’s also
abolish VAT on green energy and materials like insulation, wind turbines,
draught excluders, fuel-efficient boilers and the rest. The tampon tax should
also go.

Out of the EU we could make all of these changes. In it
today we can make none of them.

We are awaiting the EU’s proposals to see if
one day we might get away with abolishing the tampon tax. I doubt they would
ever allow us to make domestic energy cheaper. All thiscosts £1.9bn a year.

I want more people to afford a
home of their own, so let’s take stamp duty off property in the current lowest
band of £125,000 to £250,000.That costs £900m.

We should do more to reduce
council tax, which bites hard on those who own their own home but have modest
incomes. There’s £1.5bn to help with that.

This would give living standards a
boost, improve the NHS, help with disability and social care and get rid of
austerity.

It would also boost our balance of payments, as the £12bn the state
and the private sector send to the EU institutions all goes out over the
foreign exchange account and worsens ourbalance of payments as a result.

Brexit will be good for the UK.

It will give us a 0.6% boost to GDP by spending our own money, and give us back
control over the things that matter most to the country.